5
Expressway, No Way! Keep up the pressure!
The Oxford-Cambridge Expressway continues to threaten Botley with its
unwanted presence. While the possible routes are not due to be
announced until the autumn, it is pretty clear that there will be broadly
two choices for where the new road goes near Oxford: one would be
south of the city (possibly cutting across from the M40 to the A34 in the
Garsington area); the other would go north and then west of the city,
close to the A34.
This western route has dire implications for Botley, Wytham and South
Hinksey. The arguments against it have been made repeatedly and
include loss of housing, damage to the Commonwealth War Graves
cemetery, noise, air pollution and more. It’s hard to believe it is still on
the table and, what is more, some villages south of the city are actively
promoting the A34 as the route! A second western possibility, coming
down the A34 to the Botley roundabout, up the A420 towards Wootton,
and then cutting down to join the A34 also has many drawbacks.
The leader of the County Council continues to promote the Expressway
as a way to ‘sort out the A34’. The idea that to ‘sort out’ ten miles of
rush hour congestion around our city we need to develop a road from
Oxford to Cambridge would be laughable were it not coming from a
politician with some significant influence on our future. For over 30
years, empirical studies and official reports have agreed on the ‘rather
inconvenient truth’ that new roads create more traffic. A better solution
would be to use new forms of traffic management such as the variable
speed limits used on the M25 which help keep traffic moving.
Extra traffic will certainly be generated from new car-based housing
developments, and all of this will add to traffic and congestion on local
roads. The Expressway is all about opening up more land for housing.
The Government’s target is for 1 million new homes along the route –
that’s equivalent to two cities the size of Liverpool. It’s hard to see how
that will ‘sort out’ congestion. Car-dependent settlements along this
route will do nothing to meet the need for genuinely low-cost housing in
employment centres such as Oxford.
These inflated housing figures are being challenged, as is the need for
the Expressway. Some limited road improvements may be called for,
especially around Milton Keynes. And there are alternatives. The
Oxford–Cambridge rail link is moving ahead far too slowly – is the roads
lobby scared that much-improved public transport on this route will